Never let anyone tell you that you have a problem

[Packerfan75]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

There is a big difference between collecting and hoarding.

When I worked for county health departments for a few years after I graduated from college, I saw actual hoarder cases. These were not people who simply owned piles and piles of books, albums, or movies. By contrast, they were people who never threw anything away.

Hoarders keep junk mail and old utility bills, they keep clothes that don't fit them anymore, they keep electronic equipment that does not work anymore, they keep old cell phones, they keep old cable and A/V wires, they keep tools that no longer function, and so on. In the worst instances, they even refuse to throw away their actual garbage.

I saw homes where trash, pizza boxes, newspapers, and junk mail were piled up to the ceiling in every room, and where the occupants barely had enough space to move from one room to another. One woman lived in a house where her trash in every room included used tampons.

For most of us, it's instinctual to throw away pizza boxes as soon as we eat a pizza, it's instinctual to throw away take-out food containers, and it's instinctual to throw away paper cups, paper plates, etc. There's no way that I would leave these things sitting on my living room coffee table or even my kitchen counter after I'm finished using them.

It's really astounding, though, how many people in the world never clean up after themselves. They leave a pizza delivery box on their living room coffee table, it stays there only to be buried by other pizza delivery boxes, and, before you know it, there's a huge stack of dirty cardboard, dirty paper cups, etc. in the living room. It's really disturbing, and I've seen it all before.

I've seen enough of the Hoarding: Buried Alive and Hoarders shows to notice that not all hoarders are the same. Most of them identify themselves as collectors also. Some have large amounts of what you and I call trash, as you say. Pizza boxes, used tissue, expired food, even dead animals. But others are much more focused on certain things they "collect". Dolls, board games, art, clothes, tools, etc. Some have very valuable collections, some are worthless. Some are very messy and dirty, others are very clean. But they all spend vast amounts of time and money to acquire these things with the intent of using them, reselling them or giving them away but that's more a rationale to justify the purchase. They rarely ever achieve any of those goals. They're basically what we would call, shopaholics. They get a thrill from purchasing.
I'm not saying I'm 100% right about this guy. I don't even know him. But you can look at signs or symptoms and take an educated guess that there's a distinct possibility.